Turner, a member of the Forbes 400 Richest in America since 1982 (the first year the list was published) has occupied the front ranks of American business for more than a generation and has enraged many people along the way. But lately it has been Turner who’s been enraged, as he watched his still-considerable fortune shrink by more than two-thirds, a casualty of the Time Warner-AOL merger. Yesterday the company of which Turner owns 155 million shares, or 3.8%, announced a $99 billion annual loss due to writedowns, the largest in the history of American business. (See: “Turner Shocks By Stepping Down.”)

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Ted Turner
AOL Time Warner
But if Turner still had plenty of money, he didn’t have a job–or at least not much of one. “I confess I am profoundly surprised,” said
Porter
Bibb
Porter Bibb
, Turner’s biographer, last night. “I think he is a very angry man. He is miffed beyond words at having been marginalized. He is a powerful leader with nothing to lead anymore.”

As other top executives, most recently Chairman
Steve
Case
Steve Case
, quit their roles, Turner, who was vice chairman, expected to be brought back into something of a managerial role, Bibb says, citing sources close to Turner. Certainly, he expected to be named at least interim chairman, a position he wanted badly. But he wasn’t asked– instead, current Chief Executive
Richard
Parsons
Richard Parsons
was given the title–despite the fact that Turner owns more AOL
stock than the rest of the board combined. (Steve Case owns 10.8 million shares; former CEO
Gerald
Levin
Gerald Levin
owns 2.7 million, according to the company’s most recent proxy statement.)

Turner, 64, who says he will devote himself to his many charitable projects, is without a corporate position for the first time since 1963 when he became president and chief operating officer of
Turner Advertising
. Like
Howard
Hughes
Howard Hughes
, the equally eccentric billionaire, playboy and movie mogul, Turner inherited a substantial company from his father in his early 20s. In Turner’s case, his father committed suicide. He turned the billboard company into a media powerhouse, renaming it
Turner Broadcastin
g. (In the typical fashion of corporate profiles, Turner’s official AOL Time Warner biography omits the inheritance part, to say nothing of the suicide part, though both facts are well known.)

In 1970, Turner entered the television business by buying an Atlanta independent UHF television station, which became the foundation of his empire. He used satellite hookups to originate the “superstation” and used it to broadcast the Atlanta Braves and the Atlanta Hawks, which he also bought. In 1980 he started
CNN
, the first worldwide 24-hour news network.

In 1986, TBS acquired the
MGM
film library. Turner’s company used it as the cornerstone of
TNT
, which it launched in 1988. In 1994, he merged Turner Broadcasting with
New Line Cinema
, adding films from that company as programming on his broadcast network. Backed by
Michael
Milken
Michael Milken
, he made a bid to buy
CBS
, but was rebuffed.

Turner actually had experience in managing media properties and cable television networks; he created synergies–something that AOL Time Warner is supposed to do. Along the way he found time to win the America’s Cup, actually skippering his yacht Courageous, to found the Goodwill Games (which tottered once the ending of the Cold War robbed them of their purpose) and to get married–and divorced–three times, most famously to
Jane
Fonda
Jane Fonda
.

In 1991, well before he sold his company to Time Warner, he was named Time Magazine‘s Man of the Year.

If Turner became frustrated with AOL Time Warner, he himself sowed the seeds. In 1996, claiming to be too small to compete with media behemoths, he sold Turner Broadcasting to Time Warner. His management role has been eroded ever since.

Meanwhile, he has watched fellow moguls
Rupert
Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch
of
News Corp.
and
Sumner Redstone
of
Viacom
grow richer and more powerful. Turner, who once ranked 21st on the Forbes 400 Richest in America list is now tied for 80th place. He has flirted with the idea of running for president, but never did take up that quixotic quest, saying among other things that Jane wouldn’t let him.

Turner turned to more oddball endeavors, such as flirting with buying a Russian television network. He also became a serious philanthropist, outdoing the U.S. government at one point by making a $1 billion pledge to the United Nations Foundation. He is also active in anti-nuclear and environmental causes. Yesterday, he said in a statement, “Over the last five years, it has become even clearer to me how much personal satisfaction I derive from these activities. Therefore, I would like to now devote even more time, effort and resources to them.”

Also in recent years as his most recent marriage dissolved, Turner, who suffers from bipolar disorder, reportedly contemplated suicide, as his father did 30 years ago. Perhaps it was his penchant for erratic behavior, starting from his days as a wealthy prep-school boy and undergraduate, which led the AOL Time Warner board to look elsewhere for its chairman.

Ted Turner once said, “If I only had a little humility, I’d be perfect.” Turner was kidding about being perfect, but his being humbled is no joke.